Maddie is a smart little girl - she started with words at around 10 months and by 18 months was conversing in short 4-5 word sentences on a daily basis. These days you can't get her to stop talking. I read recently that the average 3 year old has a vocabulary of 300-500 words and I think she's a little over that number herself!
She knows her colors, numbers, recognizes most of her letters, shapes, etc.
Recently she's shown an interest in telling time, and I've noticed a distinct difference in her coloring. Before it was just random splatters of color strew across the page and whatever picture was on it, but now she's really trying to color "in the lines." Do not get me wrong - I've never once told her to stay in the lines! She's just progressing developmentally.
As excited as I am about her going to preschool - we are looking seriously at homeschooling our kids. In light of FCAT testing - teaching to the tests and the lack of morals and values taught in public schools I really feel that I can do a better job at home. I'd also like them to learn about the Bible and Jesus and let's be honest - it is not going to happen in a public school. Private schools are also an option, but expensive. I won't be going back to work anytime in the next 5-10 years probably so unless Mike gets a hefty raise and we pay off our vehicles I don't think it's a possibility for us in the immediate future. It's all we can do really to send them to the Wesley Academy for preschool.
So back to homeschooling...
I've started doing school at home a few days a week right now. I found some really awesome books by KUMON and we're having fun with the "let's color" and "let's fold paper" books. I also bought "let's cut paper" but it has wandered off it seems.
Mike's mom, Paula, also sent a whole stack of preschool home schooling books she bought at Christianbookstore.com and Maddie loves doing the workbooks. They're published by a company called School Zone and the one we've been working in lately is Preschool Basics.
Here are some of the things she's done this past week:
From the Kumon- Let's Color book:
This page instructed her to use a BLUE crayon and draw the rain coming out of the clouds
Instructions were for her to use a black crayon to give the boy some hair!
Mmm spaghetti with an orange crayon
Sprinkles on the ice cream. We chose purple, pink and green instead of the orange, yellow and brown - those weren't very girly colors!
Workbook pages:
The first day she got the books we did almost 30 pages in one sitting. I wasn't sure if she'd be ready for some of the exercises but she most certainly was!
We started with instructions to find the dog and girl that had short (hair and tail)
Then we worked on finding the things that were the SAME
This exercise asked her to find the object that went with the first object
She had to switch gears from drawing circles around things to drawing lines to match the items with the place they belonged
I'm excited about the prospect of teaching her at home and out and about. I like the idea of more flexibilty in our days and schedules. We are fortunate in this area to have a very active home schooling community that plans lots of activities for the kids to learn and socialize. And any of you who know Maddie personally will agree that she lacks nothing when it comes to social skills!
1 comment:
Lisa Ausley says:
socialization is one of the BIGGEST reasons to homeschool. Children get socialized by the great people, adults, families and children that their caring, nurturing parents choose for them. "Children become like who they're with." In a public setting, there is no control about "who a child is with".
A homeschool child is socializing with individuals across the age-spectrum as they interact in life together within a church family and within the homeschool circle.
One big problem with homeschooling is that you do have to stay home sometimes to get the job done....homeschoolers are notorious for getting overinvolved in life and activities and interests and hobbies and service projects, etc. etc. Too much socialization and not enough hard, solid work is not good either! Ha.
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